Health food homicide

One by one they have all gone and now she is alone. The phones don’t ring. No footsteps can be heard in the hallway. Nary a door opens or closes in nearby offices.

The world inside feels as muffled and quiet as the world outside, where several inches of snow are threatening to shut down the city. As the only staff member who took the bus and didn’t have to worry about driving safely home, she has stayed, unconcerned as she answers emails and processes documents. Ho hum, snow again, what’s everyone so excited about? This is winter in Illinois. This is what happens here.

Then she remembers.

She had planned to go to the health food store that evening. She needs to buy kale. And not just any kale. Organic kale. She has tried the other stuff and found it limp and short-lived compared to the locally grown fluffy green bunches that particular store offers. And she absolutely must make sure she never runs out because kale is the secret ingredient in her morning nutrition shakes. Kale is Supervegetable. One sip of that amazing concoction and she can leap tall buildings at a single bound.

But she has only enough kale in her refrigerator for one more shake.

One. Just one. If the weather worsens as much the next day as forecasters are predicting, she might not be able to get to the store to get new kale. The store might even be closed. She shudders to think such a horrible thought.

But wait. There’s more! What if the store is not open tonight? Everything else is closing early, according to the radio, so why not the little store. Gasp! Horrors! What to do?

OK, she tells herself. Don’t panic. Let’s get the facts, then you can panic. And sure enough, when she calls the store she learns it is going to close at 6:00 p.m.

Time to panic!

By the time she leaves work at 5:00 and trundles to a bus stop and waits for a bus and is slowly chauffeured home and shovels enough snow to make a path to get her car out of the driveway … by then it will almost certain be too late.

Too late to replenish her kale supply. Too late to insure that she will have what she needs to make those miraculous morning shakes throughout a possibly shut-in weekend.

Too late! More gasp! More horrors! What oh what to do?

Maybe she could take a bus straight to the store and another bus home from there, just skip the shoveling-snow-to-move-the-car situation altogether. Great idea! Except to take the bus that goes by the store, first she would have to connect with it at the main transit point, and the bus schedule tells her that bus #2 is scheduled to leave that point just minutes before bus #1 is scheduled to arrive. Not such a great idea.

Suddenly the light bulb above her head bursts into brightness with the obvious solution: leave work early. It’s about 20 minutes till 5:00. If she goes now, she’ll have a fighting chance of getting an earlier bus and arriving home with enough time to rescue her car and make it to the store before 6:00.

Off with the computer. On with boots and coat and hat and scarf. Grab book and lunch bag and purse. Turn off all the lights. Lock the doors. Hurry hurry hurry.

It’s hard to hurry, though, when inconvenient mounds of thick snow are piled all over sidewalks and crosswalks, and the parking lot that is the shortest path to the bus stop is an icy obstacle course. But as luck would have it -- and luck does have it sometimes – here is her bus pulling up to the corner just as she arrives. Blessed bus, wonderful bus, opening its welcoming doors to allow her to clamber in.

Huddled in a seat in the dark as the bus rumbles cautiously down the street, she silently urges the driver to do whatever is necessary to keep this vehicle moving with all possible speed – or rather, in this weather, with the least possible delay.

There isn’t a moment to lose.

Ah, at last, she sees her corner. She pulls the cord, the bus slows down, she stumbles to the door, it opens, she’s outa there. Slogging through the white stuff to reach her door. Home at last. Fumble for the key, miss the keyhole in her haste, finally get the door open, drop the book and lunch bag, grab the shovel, push her way to the car, struggle to get that door open, start the car, commence to shoveling.

Shovel.

Shovel.

Shovel.

The minutes tick by as she labors to dislodge heaps of snow from behind the car and create enough path to give her a fighting chance of backing out to the street without getting stuck. Finally she’s done about as much as she can manage, shoveling not being one of her better skills, and she heads back to the car, ready to roll.

Except the car is covered trunk to hood with snow.

Somewhere inside this automobile there is a watchamacallit, she just bought it a couple days ago, it must be here. Yesssss! Here it is, hiding under the passenger seat. Frantically she brushes off the windshield, the side windows, the back window. Finally she’s in the driver’s seat and the car is moving, ponderously grinding its way backwards to the street. She’s at the stop light. She’s only a few blocks from the store. She’s in the parking lot with minutes to spare. She’s racing down the aisle to the produce section, where she sees one lone bunch of kale sitting in its bed of ice water. She reaches for it --

And a hand swoops down and grabs it, leaving her own hand dangling over the now empty bin.

She stares in shocked disbelief at a tall man striding away, pushing his cart in front of him, her kale inside it. This just can’t be happening. There must be more kale here, hidden away in the dark recesses of the store where customers never go. She rushes to the checkout counter and pleads with the clerk to go back there and look. He goes. She waits.

And waits.

And waits.

This is taking so long, is it a good sign or a bad one? Finally she goes back to the produce section to see if the clerk has come out into the light. After a couple minutes, he finally reappears with a cart full of boxes. “Sorry it took so long,” he says, this customer wanted a couple things, too.

“This customer” is the same man who has stolen her kale right from under her nose.

But no matter, there’s more where that came from. Two more bunches, which the clerk is placing on the shelf. But as she reaches down immediately to take them, they disappear right before her eyes. That man has done it again. He has beat her to the punch. He has stolen HER kale.

How can the clerk let this happen? Why doesn’t he do something? But he is walking to a different part of the store to place the contents of other boxes in other places. Obviously he is not interested in seeing that justice is done.

Meanwhile, back at the produce section, that man, that despicable kale thief, is examining a box of avocados, pretending to be totally oblivious to her distress. But he can’t hide the tiniest of smirks. He knows what he’s done. And he doesn’t care.

He does not deserve kale. Kale is too good for the likes of this monster. He is evil personified.

She is stunned, shocked, incapable of rational thought. She has only one idea in her mind. Get that kale. Any way. Any how. Just get it.

She grabs the spiked sign that reads “Organic kale, $2.79,” jumps between the man and the avocados and plunges the sign into her nemesis’ heart. She laughs maniacally as he falls to the floor in a pool of blood, clutching his chest, wheezing, staring unbelieving at her while she reaches into his cart and takes all three bunches of kale, then runs victoriously out the door.

She is in her car, maneuvering snow-packed roads to get home and put away her prize, when she suddenly remembers that she never paid for her groceries. The car clock says it is 6:02, too late to go back. She will have to pay next time she goes to the store.

After all, she’s not a criminal. She just needs her kale.

(Except for the homicide and a few other minor details, this is a true story. Really!)

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